“Hey,” he said.

The boy turned and the man showed his teeth, large and white, as if smiling. “I was just messin with you.”

“Ah,” said the boy.

“Just taking your temperature, my man.”

The boy nodded and looked away.

“Hey,” said the man.

The boy looked back at him.

“Name’s Jonas.” He held his hand out for shaking. Held it there.

The boy stepped over and took it. Cold and thin and raspy as the hand of an old woman. He said his name and stepped away again.

“What they got you in here for, Sean?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” The man watched him. Then he said: “What do they think you did, Sean?” and the boy said without turning, “They think I raped a girl.”

The man gave a low, portentous whistle. “White?” he said.

The boy looked over.

“White pussy or dark?” The man laughed and said, “What am I saying? Pussy ain’t got but one color, ain’t that right, Sean?” He laughed until he dislodged something from his throat and turned and spat in the direction of the stool in his cell.

“Hey, Sean. Sean,” he said. “I can see you ain’t no rapist, my man, shit. I’m just messin with you.”

The boy stared out into the corridor.

“You talk to your lawyer man, Sean? Or lady? Half the time it’s a lady nowadays.”

“No.”

“What’s this? You ain’t talked to no lawyer?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Nothing to talk about.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s nothing to talk about.”

“ ’Cause you didn’t do nothin.”

The boy was silent.

The man peered at the boy’s profile and said, “How old are you, Sean?”

“Eighteen.”

“No you ain’t.”

The boy said nothing. The lights buzzed.

“Eighteen. God damn, I got a daughter oldern you.” He hung his head. Then he raised it and said: “Boy, do you even know what kind of trouble you’re in?”

“I got an idea.”

“It must be a pretty poor idea or else you wouldn’t be here chatting with me, you’d be talking to your motherfucking lawyer.”

He turned away as if he’d finished with the boy. He walked to his bunk and stood staring down at it. Then he came back to the bars, his hands back into the boy’s cell.

“Where your folks at?” he said. “They know you’re in here? They know the shit you’re in?”

“No.”

“You ain’t called them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not their problem.”

“Not their problem.”

“No, sir.”

“You they son?”

“What?”

“Are you their son?”

“Yes.”

“Blood son? Born to them some eighteen years ago? Born to them and to no others?”

“Yes.”

“Then motherfucker you are nothing but their problem. And you are always gonna be and I’ll tell you something else, Sean. The judge and the jury might set you loose in the world again but set you loose to what? Loose to what? You understand what I’m saying?”

The boy turned and looked into the man’s bloodshot eyes.

“Boy, look at you. You a young man, but you already on a road that don’t go but one way.” His hands rolled in space and he drew the air into his flared nostrils in the manner of a man gathering in the aroma of some exquisite dish.

“Mm-hmm,” he said, “I can smell it. I can smell it on you like shit on a dog’s ass.”

Luske was waiting in the same room, at his chair, hands on the file. He now wore his jacket and he had shaved and the room smelled of shaving cream and coffee. When the boy was seated and they were alone, Luske pushed one of the two large coffees across the table, the smell of it rich and darkly delicious. A smell of the normal, the free world. Luske rooted in his jacket pocket and reached across and unfisted onto the table a pile of packets and cream containers.

“I didn’t know how you take it so I grabbed everything.”

“I usually take it with a cigarette.”

“I told you there’s no smoking in this building,” he said, then slid the boy’s cigarettes and lighter across the table.

The boy thanked him and got one lit.

Luske watched him.

“Do you know what day this is, Sean?”

The boy thought and said, “Sunday?”

“No. This is your lucky day.”

“It is?”

“You better believe it. We picked up the owner of that Ford truck, this boy named Valentine, and he fell to pieces like a china doll. I never saw a boy that size cry so hard. Did he cry like that when you hit him with that stick?”

“No, sir. He didn’t say a word.”

“Well, he’s got plenty to say now.”

“I don’t suppose he said I wasn’t any part of what they did to that girl.”

“No, he didn’t. He rubbed his big red ear and said you just wanted to get you some of that free pussy.” The detective lifted his coffee and sipped it and set it down again.

“He’s lying,” said the boy, and Luske said, “Maybe. But who’s to say?”

“I am.”

Luske seemed to be waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, the detective said: “He did give us names, however. And this morning I gave the girl a photo array to look at and she picked them out, all four of them. And she’ll testify.”

The boy drew on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke.

“I guess my picture was in there too.”

Luske nodded. “She didn’t look twice at it.”

“And I guess that doesn’t count for much since she was passed out.”

“No. But other things do.”

“What other things?”

“The waitress’s account. The fact that you were pulled over within sight of the hospital. That dead dog we found where you said it was. Although there was no blue tarp.”

“The wind might’ve got it.”

“Or somebody took it.”

The boy tipped his ash and watched the flakes fall to the floor. “What about the gun?”

“Sold by a dealer outside Lincoln. Purchased by Reed Lester five days before you picked him up.”

“And what about him?”

“Lester? Still at large.”

The boy observed the tip of his cigarette. As if reading some message in the thin scroll of smoke.

“So now what?” he said.

“So now I’m compelled to release you, Sean. Your father’s waiting at the front desk.”

Some heavy thing like an ax swung in his chest. He stared at the detective.

“We called him about the truck, Sean.”

“How much does he know?”

“I don’t know. I just know he’s here.”

The boy said nothing. He stared at his cup of coffee.

“I’m compelled to let you go, Sean, but I’m not happy about it.”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I got a feeling about you, despite what it looks like you did for that girl. Maybe because of it. Maybe because of the way you did it. The fact that you didn’t call the police and you didn’t look for any help whatsoever but you just walked back there and whipped those two boys with the handle of a shit plunger. The fact that you had Reed Lester in your truck for whatever reason. There’s something in the eyes of people who are capable of certain things, and I see it in yours.”

The boy did not look away.

“I’d never do what they did,” he said.

“I didn’t say you would. But there’s plenty more a man can do that will end just as bad. He might not go looking for it, and he won’t think he wants it, but he won’t do enough to avoid it either and it will find him. It will find him, Sean, sooner or later.”

38

Some unknown hours later, unknown distance, she becomes aware of a change in her stride, in the nature of the effort it takes to keep moving forward, and in the sound of that effort.

She stops and looks around at the valley she’s come into. A mountainous small amphitheater. Th e angle of the trees confirming what her body has been telling her, that she is no longer going down but is crossing snow that has massed evenly on level ground. Without the feeling of down in her legs, a stone of fear rolls from its place behind her heart. All she knows, all she counts on, is down. Without down, and without a thing in the sky to go by, with no horizon to lock onto, she might walk and walk until she arrived suddenly in the cold night at her own tracks.